Farm Size

[sdfarm]

What size property do you keep your horses on? How much pasture/paddock?

In my 15 years boarding, my best experience left my horses with access to 1/2 acre in the yucky months, and 1 acre in the summer and fall months on 10-12 hour turnout. I grew up on a hundred acre farm, and someday, I hope to be there again... but, for the next 5-10, I'm trying to decide what will be liveable and what will not if I buy a micro mini farm.

[Holly Jeanne]

I have 12 3/4 acres. Probably 1 1/2 is yard. During spring, my 3 (out 24/7 as I don't have a barn) are in a pasture that is about 1 1/2 acres. In the winter, they get the run of that pasture, plus one that is about 5 plus a 1/4 acre paddock. The reason for that is that my big run-in shed is in the 5 acre pasture and I obviously want them to have access in the winter. During the summer, they are usually limited to the 5 acre pasture during the day and the 1/4 acre paddock at night so that I can catch one to put on a grazing muzzle. Again, I want them to have access to the big run-in when it's really hot. My neighbor is in the process of refencing the back as his cattle spent their winter in my field this past winter. Once that is refenced, my 3 will have access to that in the winter or earlier if we have another summer of drought. I'd really love to be able to put in two more run-in sheds (or better yet a run-in and a barn) but that is way beyond my budget right now.

[county]

We own 208 acres and rent another 120 about 180 acres is in pastures for the cattle and horses the rest is crop land but we also graze that after crops are harvested.

[clivers]

We have 110 acres, and about 50-60 of it was hayfields when we bought it (rest woods). We've fenced about 20 acres for the horses in 3 big fields. (smallest about 5 acres) and we will subdivide as budget allows/as needed in the future. This time of year I really wish we had a sacrifice paddock or at least a fence around our sand ring. Our guys will be on limited turnout for the next few weeks, and after that my easy keeping warmblood will spend the summer in a grazing muzzle, but he tolerates it.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/photo.php?pid=6020058&id=681770272

[Maybeapril]

We have 40 acres, but the horse and mini donkey are on about 2 of that. At some point I want to fence in more and give them a bit more room. They don't seem smushed or anything. They really spend most of the time in one area. Now that the grass is coming in they seem to be grazing most of their field. They also have a small paddock area where their barn is that they stay in when the weather is bad. I made it so the two areas can also connect to each other.

[sk_pacer]

320 acres, 5 acres yard, 55 hayland and the rest crop production. Of the 5 acres yard, have 2.5ish acres that gets made into hay every year, an acre to mow, apporx 1.3 acres pasture, and the rest is taken up by a bog hole and buildings.

[sdfarm]

I can't remember ever having any more than maybe three acres for the horses boarded or at home ring, barn, and all. But, there was always the option of expanding without crashing into the neighbors:)

[2DogsFarm]

My farmette is 5ac total, about half of that is pasture with the barn/arena sitting in the middle of the 2 pastures.

I don't have the equipment to maintain a pasture in the "correct" way - no tractor, harrow, spreader or seeder. So my lawn tractor does double duty pulling a dumpcart to haul composted manure from my pile to the acreage which I then spread by hand.
I "mulch" the pastures by setting the deck to Low when I mow and plowing through manure piles. I don't pick the pastures.

For my 2 horses this is sufficient to keep both fields in grass - not a golf course putting green by any means, but enough grass so my hay consumption drops in the warm months.

So far we're all fat & happy at 2 Dogs Farm :yes:

[SCF01]

We have 40 acres but probably use less than 7-8 acres for 4 horses. Maybe 5 acres is pasture. I wouldn't put any more horses on that area or I'd run out of grass.

[Boomer]

I have 22 acres, 18.5 acres in pasture, about 3/4 acre as yard near the house, and balance as creeks or marshy/drainage areas the horses are fenced out of.

The 18.5 acre pasture split roughly into two 9-acre pastures: each pasture has 3 horses in it full time.

I've got very good pasture so I could probably add horses, but in the winter the ground is very wet & fragile. So I intentionally stock low. I also stock low to keep the diet forage based and any feed bills small.

I've heard anywhere from 1 -3 acres per horse as a stocking number, but I think it depends on your grass and soil. Once the land/grass is eroded it's very hard to re-establish it.

[walkinthewalk]

My four are currently on ~12 of the 23.5 acres we own. It is good quality rolling pasture.

Even though we are in a rocky area, we don't have rocks or boulders jutting thru the topsoil to ruin pasture quality and space.

It is divided into 4 pastures, with a one-acre pasture attached to the paddock for when I need to keep everyone up front.

I keep all the gates open and do not rotate pastures.

We still have 9+ of that 23+ acres of good pasture to open up, but this seems to be the year for equipment breakdowns, so fencing will have to wait:(

[Pocket Pony]

Wow, I'm jealous that all y'all have so much land!

Mr. PoPo and I have a small five acre farmette. Probably 2-3 acres of it is "pasture" (meaning the horses can be turned out there) although various sections are in various planting/growing stages. We have a lot of...drylot here and we're trying to get our pastures established. The horses spend most of their time in 1/2-1 acre areas and that seems to be enough room for them to get their jollies out. Once they are done yahooing, they mostly stand in the same place and swat flies off each other. :lol:

[MikeP]

I have 160 acres that I own. Most of the pasture is for cattle. 5 horses use about eight acres dedicated for them, 4 in summer pasture and four in winter pasture.

The cattle and horses can also range through a good bit of timberland. I turn them out on it for brief periods in the summer.

If we get a serious dry spell, I'll let the horses fudge on the cattle pasture a bit....:D

[grayarabpony]

54 acres of land, 5-6 acres of which is pasture.

[camohn]

A lot of it depends on if you plan to pick poop from paddocks (on small acerage you will need to / need to arrange for manure removal and bigger you can rotate pastures and let ma nature take care of it) and if you want grass or things mowed down to dirt and hay for all forage. If you want grass and to not pick poop out of pastures you probably want 2 acres per horse. You can get away with less with more maintenance and hay.
What we have........12 to 13 horses on a 34 acre farm. There are 3 10 acre fields and about 4 acres of house/barn yard. 2 are summer pasture and the third is the hay field. In the winter the last cutting of hay is left on the field and that is the winter pasture to turn em out an and let the poo break down in the winter snows for the other 2.

[MunchkinsMom]

I have 10 acres, 9 of which is pasture, 3 horses graze in that 16 hours a day. In the summer I have to mow (with my garden size tractor/mower) because the horses can't keep up with the grass growth.

[Acertainsmile]

We have 130 acres, about 20 of those are fields and paddocks. The rest is wheat and hay fields. We usually have about 14 horses on the farm.

[deltawave]

Our property is a little less than 12 acres total, with one 1/2 acre sacrifice paddock attached to the barn where my 3 (2 horses and a pony) spend a majority of their time. That paddock is attached to a 2-2.5 acre grass paddock, and I let them out there weather/grass permitting to graze, just by opening the gate. Our other paddock (about 4-4.5 acres) is across the driveway and the horses have to be led out there. There's no shelter in that one, so that's the "fair weather" paddock and I also ride in there so I'm more picky about letting it get torn up. But it's where they get to really stretch their legs and play so I try to get them out there as often as I can.

Next to the house is a 1 acre area that I haven't fenced, but that's where I do some of my riding and put up my jumps.

My horses are outside 24/7/365, with access to their stalls (which open into the dirt paddock) when the weather is bad. So they move all the time, but definitely see the time out on the grass paddocks as a "treat" and act accordingly, playing and buck-farting around for the first 5 minutes or so. :)

I'd love to have more-more-more in terms of pasture space, but in all honesty if I manage the grazing carefully there's more than enough grass for my easy keepers and I'd have a tough time keeping up with the mowing if I had much more to do.

[PNWjumper]

I'm jealous of everyone with big farms too! You just can't find land like that up here (at least not anywhere near a city that actually has jobs!). We're on 5 acres with 6 horses. 4 of mine live together in a 2 acre field and the other two live in individual 1/2 - 1 acre pastures. I have a 100'x180' arena on the property and the house/yard/driveway probably take up another acre. I'm dying to buy 10-20 acres somewhere (and would do just about anything to have 100+ acres!). It would be nice to have room to breathe :)

[Seven-up]

I have just under 7 acres, divided into thirds. The 2 on the outsides are pastures, roughly 2 acres each, and the middle strip is for the house and the barn/roundpen behind it. I have 3 horses here, and the barn has 10 or 11 stalls, so at some point I think there were several more horses here.

I don't have an arena, I just ride in one of the pastures. I hope to fence off a section for a dedicated arena soon. I keep the fly population pretty much at zero by not having a manure pile (saves space, too)--a spreader is the best invention ever!

I probably wouldn't want to keep more than 5 or 6 horses here. I could, with the 2 pastures, but it works out much better to rotate pastures; one gets used while the other rests and restocks supplies.

[finneventer]

We have 21 acres. Half of that is pasture (some of it not yet fenced), some woods, and our house is on about 2 acres. We have 4 horses here and it seems just right :).

[baileygreyhorse]

28 acres. We have 2 pastures, about 5.5 acres each. There is a small paddock we close off in the winter to keep them off of the pastures. The north pasture is only open in good weather since it doesn't have a shed. The rest of the farm is hay fields and a (stupid) 3 acre front yard.

[Fancy That]

I'm with PNWJUMPER..... very jealous of all the huge farms ya'll have :)

Mr. FancyThat and I both work in High Tech (Silicon Valley), so our new 4 acre ranchette is a god-send being only 20 miles south of San Jose, CA.

If you want more land...you have to go way further out (away from job/commute zone)

We are just setting up the place but there is a small front pasture, which has a gate that leads to the sacrifice paddock. There is another gate from the sacrifice paddock which leads to the large rear pasture. The paddock always has one gate open, because it's where the stall shelters are, and the water trough.

That way, in the winter, I can save the pastures by keeping the horses (3 of them) in the paddock during really bad storms.

Planned it so it's low-maintenance, you don't have to lead horses anywhere to move them from different fields, etc. No stall cleaning. They are out 24/7 and just have a pasture shelter and some oak trees.

It's exciting being a new ranchette owner! Love threads like these to hear how others do it.

Oh - I have a spot saved for a 100 x 200 arena. It's currently in the pasture :)

[okggo]

We have 10 acres, and I don't know the exact breakdown, but we have pasture, woods, home, barns, and arena so probably 6 acres is pasture and the rest is woodland or structures/lawn. Of the 6 acres, it's broken into 2 pastures - each has 3 horses on it right now.

We plan to give the horses another couple areas of woodlands at some point, ultimately letting the woods and 'dry-lot' be their 24/7 home and rotating the pasture use. I'd love to have more pasture, but we've got what we've got...

[MistyBlue]

Fancy That...couldn't have been easy shopping for a farmettein your area! Congrats on the new place. :D
I'm in CT...I am noticing farm sizes compared to state/areas vary quite a bit. I'm in south/central Ct...typical CT land of heavy woods/wetlands/ledge/rock growers paradise. :lol: If there was any market for rocks in this state, I'd be a rock farm and a bazillionaire. :yes:
4.5 acres here...cleared about 2 acres so far, fully cleared. On that sits a 24x40 barn with a 75x220 attached dirt/sacrifice paddock made for mud repelling. On the south side of that is another paddock...about 150x225. That one is a grass paddock...not fenced yet because there's a pile of old logs in the way and it needs one more long drainage ditch put in before the fence goes up. Oh, and someone who's better at putting up fence than I am, LOL! On the east side of the main dirt paddock is a cleared area for a 100x200 ring and most of the sub-base is in. 44 tri-axel truckloads of large crush. Packed and graded with a 2 degree slant for drainage from end to end. Still needs a CRAPload of work though and might turn out to be a different size...probably more of an 85x180. The ring area runs lengthwise behind my house, which sits above it about 40-50 feet on an outcrop of ledge. House and yard take up exactly .50 acre. On the northeast side of the house is another 1.5 acre area that's still moderately to heavily wooded and will eventually be another turnout. But we'll probably just clear the low/small stuff and leave it lightly wooded. Then there's the last .50 acre that's low wooded wet crappy ground...which is where all my drainage leads to.
A LOT of money in clearing, grading and drainage. More than we budgeted for and planned for...so we're way behind on developing the place but will get there. And the drainage is so important...I appreciate it every time we have tons of wet weather and everyone else is knee deep in mud and we're not. :winkgrin:
4 stall barn...only 2 horses here for now. We'll never have enough full time grazing for 4 or even 2 horses but eventually we'll have enough for a few hours of grazing per day in good weather. Then there's the fun of planning that.;)
It works for us, nothing exciting but nice and easy to upkeep except for leaf removal time every fall.

[okggo]

Misty Blue, your wooded area sounds like ours! A mix of hills that are straight up and down, rocks, pricker bushes, and swamp. Loffly :) To make my life even harder, most of our wooded acreage is across a creek. There is no access for vehicles from the road or even neighbors side that doesnt' have a tree down, a ditch, or some barrier in the way. So I've been doing all the clearing by hand with a walk behind Billy Goat (best investment ever made). What I've been cursing is the 100 year old barbed wire fence that runs all over, 90% of which is BURIED. I'll find a strand, start to pull it up, and it breaks. I have to go digging to find it again. We got a super-duty weed whacker with blade to trim the prickers along the creek bed (this will be a fun adventure).

And the drainage woes as well. Our bank barn wall is swaying from the water/hill pressure. I just scratch my head at some of the things we find and wonder what on earth the old owners were thinking.

[mkevent]

We have 7.5 acres. Non horse fenced house and driveway and small fenced backyard(for the corgis) on maybe 1/2 acre. The rest divided into 5 pastures of maybe an acre of a bit more each. 34X48 barn with stalls leading to private paddocks with "chutes" leading to private or semi-private pastures.
I also have mine set up for it to be easy for one person to do the barn for 5-6 horses-i.e.system depends on just opening gates for pasture access so no leading of horses necessary. I did this because I'm the only horse person and I wanted it easy for the caretakers when I go on vacation with the family. Of course "easy" is a relative term,lol! In the summer months, the grass is pretty good and I can cut back on grain-try to get them to still eat hay, too but they naturally cut back on how much hay they'll eat. In the winter, I'm feeding usually 3/4 bale of hay per horse and the pastures are pretty much for equine entertainment purposes only. I don't lock in stalls unless absolutely necessary (vet recommended or hurricane force winds). Of course, since I'm neurotic, I now am planning on putting in overhangs so the horses have a shelter to go under when they're locked out of their stalls-sort of defeats the purpose, I know but I get sick of cleaning stalls 24/7!!

[MistyBlue]

LOL...lotsa fun on these type properties huh Okggo? :lol: Our previous owner was a frootloop! He sold us the 4.5 acres and the house he built and then built himself a new house behind us on another 7 acre lot he had. He got really nervous when we started clearing and showing up all the time watching. I figured out why when we uncovered graveyards for about 100 tires, bricks, cinderblocks and an old aluminum boat to name a few things. He then had the nerve to tell our bulldozer guys to pick out the tires, bricks and blocks then wash them off and pile them on his property in back so he could sell them! :eek: :mad: I chased his conniving arse off the property. Thankfully he's retired out of state now.
mkevent...I have mine all set up for being attached and full enclosed too. The main paddock is attached to the barn but the horses have to cross the barn aisle to go out. Which works for us since I use the barn aisle as a run in when they're out anyways. The grass paddock opens off the south side of the main paddock. The ring opens off the east side of the main paddock and the eventual wooded 1.5 acre paddock on the other side of my house will open off the east side of the ring. There will only be one gate into the whole system of fenced in areas.
I'm thinking of adding an overhang to the front of my barn too....even though the barn aise is a run in too the overhang will help keep it from getting heated up by sun in the warmer months and keep rain/snow from blowing in. They're pretty handy to have.
I'd also like to add a 3 sided attachment to one side of the barn not in the paddock for storage.

[mkevent]

Misty Blue-I always laugh because I think we must spend the whole day thinking about the same things! I still laugh when you mentioned about barn swallow babies looking like grumpy old men-I had forgotten that I noticed that, too!Of course, now I only have grackles and sparrows-although the grackle does a perfect imitation of my barn cat which freaks me out!
I do think I spend my days thinking of how to make my barn ultimately efficient to save time, money and labor. Unfortunately, since I'm the only horseperson in the house, all my great(?) ideas are very unappreciated! Thank goodness for Coth-there are people here far more clever than I and I ruthlessly steal all their ideas-although I don't claim credit for what I didn't think up on my own!

[didgery]

I have 1.25 acres and I think it would be very adequate for two horses if I could sink some money into constructing truly mud-proof sacrifice paddocks for the rainy days. I would love to have a hundred acres (or even ten) but this will do for now! A small barn, an outdoor arena and a few paddock improvements would make it just this side of perfect.

[TB Fan]

MistyBlue - I am hopefully going to be buying a property in NE CT. It has 4 or 5 pre-defined pastures delineated with stone walls. It's beautiful. It is lightly wooded so will need to be cleared. What was your experience with clearing? Did you do it yourself, or have a professional do it or you? If you don't mind sharing? How much per acre did it run you to clear?

[MistyBlue]

mkevent...I've got sparrows too. NOT happy with them, the swallows won't move back in while they're there.
TB Fan...you might have a lower cost for clearing in the quiet corner than I had here. On *average* for the state the general cost of turning woods to paddocks are $4k-$5k an acre. BUT...before you panic....that cost is for the typical very heavily wooded acre, that there aren't any money trees, is for the logger and crew to cut down/debranch/chip/take logs, includes a bulldozer and operator to remove stumps and backfill and pack stump holes, grading and topsoil, lyme/fertilizer/seed and lastly fencing. The cost includes the fencing too. This is about the cost on average you can expect from soup to nuts for clearing heavy CT woods and having it done by a pro fencing company. Many of the pro fencing companies we have here will do everything.
However...if you're going to be doing it a bit at a time or not soup-to-nuts and since you don't have very heavy woods with rocks...figure on about $1000 per day for the work. The average logger will cost about $1000 per day. The average dozer and guy to run it right will cost $1000 per day and the labor for fencing costs about $1000 per day. (materials no included) The good news is...on lightly wooded acreage a good logger can clear quite a bit more than an acre per day. A good dozer guy and remove more than an acre's worth of stumps and grading in a day and a fencer can put up a LOT of fencing in a day. I've known people who's had 10 acres or more fenced in a single work day. They just come in and get fence up really fast.
My 2 acres of clearing was some pretty intense work..I have ledge so grading and digging isn't always easy. Not to mention that in 2 acres I had a billion trees removed. And all were crap wood..."money trees" are straight mature hardwoods and a logger will take those and make money on them by selling them to mills. IN some cases I've known folks with big stands of straight oaks and they GOT PAID to have them taken down. *sigh* Lucky folks. ;) I had the typical craptastic Ct poplars. Not worth much of anything...but the loggers do take them when fresh cut to use for firewood cords for sale later. Or you can ask to have them chipped. So a billion crappy trees removed, a lot of grading done, some drainage dug in here and there, topsoil taken off the first paddock and put into the second one (first paddock is sacrifice and no topsoil means very little mud, second paddock is grass and needed topsoil) and that cost me about $3000 for the logger and $1500 for the grader. But my logger left a pile of 30 logs on the property in my fenceline for the second paddock...he finished and went on a bender drinking and never came back. Moron. He was great at taking trees down though. Dropped about 10 an hour! :eek: The fence we bought ourselves and had shipped in...and we fenced the first paddock ourselves. Which we will NEVER do again. We suck at it. But I have quotes from 3 different fencing commpanies who will come put up the second paddock fence and fix the first paddock fence that we messed up and they all charge $1000 per day of labor since we have the materials all here and they can do all we need done in one day.
If you have friends who can drop trees *safely* drop trees that's a good way to save money. You can rent a post hole digger for about $300-$500 for a weekend around here. Getting the posts in and straight is another story, but you're probably more handy than I am. :lol: There are ways to fence along the top of stone walls, but I don't know how it's done. :no: But it looks gorgeous. :yes:
It will cost me about $8k soup 2 nuts to have had just about 2 acres cleared, seeded and fenced but I do have more drainage than average included in that and that's because my lot is surrounded by tall ledge outcrops that drain water onto my lot all the time and I have ledge and rocks that make pounding posts (cheaper and better way to fence) impossible without shattering posts and I have to have some mistakes I made fixed. Without the extra drainage, mistakes fixed and paying someone to remove that stupid piles of logs it would knock at least 2k off the total price...so about $3k per acre without screwing up. :D

[yellow-horse]

I have 15 acres, most of it wodded, we've been slowly clearing out an acre at a time, we started with 2 1/2 acre paddocks, then added an acre, then another 1 1/2 acres. i wouldn't call them pastures, I have ir horses so prefer not to have rich grassy pastures, most of it is weeds, i feed hay year round.
so generally about 4 acres cleared for 3 horses and 2 goats.

[okggo]

TB fan, not that you asked me ;) but I'll answer you too - as we have done most clearing ourself. We hired someone to clear about an acre (by clear, he left the big trees and everything else went) for 1k - he was a local guy with a lawn service who was handy with a mini-dozer. Now...we have a huge pile of trees left to clean up, as he was supposed to finish and decided he'd had enough. I'm trying to recruit the local FD to come burn it, and if they set fire to our woods all the better, lol.

The rest we have been doing (I've been doing) on my own - just me, about 1 day a weekend and a push behind bush hog. I've done another acre (again, talking under brush and small trees) that way. We have a JD and bush hog that would be heaven if we could get it across the creek, but I'm making progress slowly and gruelingly.

MB- you had them completely turned to pasture, as in no trees left, and seeded? Any before/after pictures?

[MistyBlue]

Part of it went from excessively heavy woods to pasture...part went from excessively heavy woods and rocks to ring area...and the last part went from heavy wooded to dirt sacrifice paddock. The ring area is not finished...once the trees were removed and then destumped we had a bigger hole than we thought. So we doubled our projected amount of base fill and then ran out of steam, patience and money, LOL!
But the biggest portion went from heavy woods to grass paddock. Have to find the photos, I'll post them.

[MistyBlue]

Okay, here's some photos:
In this one you can see the grass paddock in the background surrounded by the heavy woods. Before we started the entire dirt paddock, ring area and grass paddock were the thick woods you see surrounding the grass paddock in the background. The dirt paddock is in the foreground...that's a gelding I used to have playing in the sand rolling pit:
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y172/MistyBlue5105/MooPit.jpg
This is another photo of the grass paddock through the gate. The paddock is parger than it looks in the photos:
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y172/MistyBlue5105/000_0090.jpg
This is my cleared ring area...not that you can tell now that there's 44 loads of crush as a sub base there due to all the weeds growing on top of rock. But you can see how heavy the woods are surrounding the ring area and under the weeds is my future ring:
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y172/MistyBlue5105/000_0092.jpg
This is the lighter wooded area to the east of my house, opposite side of the property from where the paddocks, ring and barn is. I want to remove everything but the biggest trees in here eventually:
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y172/MistyBlue5105/000_0217.jpg
I'd like it to look more like this for a future turnout:
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y172/MistyBlue5105/000_0216.jpg

[TB Fan]

Thanks all for your help and info. We are in negotiations for what I think will be our dream property! We've been shopping for years and waiting out that crazy inflated market. Wish us luck!

[MistyBlue]

Best of luck!!! It's really exciting!